


open hand or closed fist would be fine

by LadyLokiLaufeyson



Category: Rocketman (2019), Rocketman (2019) RPF
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Angst, Domestic Violence, Drug Addiction, Eating Disorders, Kissing, M/M, Pining, Sad, Unhealthy Relationships, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 12:44:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19173541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLokiLaufeyson/pseuds/LadyLokiLaufeyson
Summary: the blood is rare and sweet as cherry wine.





	open hand or closed fist would be fine

**Author's Note:**

> title and summary is from Cherry Wine by Hozier. this is just based off the portrayals of Elton and John in Rocketman.

John’s large, cold hand is caressing Elton’s sore face. At one point, that hand would have felt warm and safe. Now it’s nothing but oppressing.

 

Elton’s right eye has bloomed a sickly purple color and John runs a thumb over the bruised skin before kissing it tenderly. 

 

“What a beautiful shade to wear upon one’s skin,” John whispers

 

Words that Elton can’t say die in his throat.

 

“Give us a smile,” John says

 

Elton pulls his lips up, more a grimace than anything else, and he knows his teeth are stained red with blood. 

 

Sometimes Elton wonders if John was right: if Elton would be nothing without him. If Elton couldn’t be trusted to make his own decisions. If John knew what was best for Elton. 

 

Sometimes Elton also thinks that maybe he deserves being slapped around, the swift backhands that John deals out with ringed fingers, the closed fists that pound against his chest. Perhaps John was trying to crack Elton in half, maybe he loved him so much that he wanted to see what was inside such a man.

 

But most times Elton wishes the other man would just stop. That their relationship would cease to exist and Elton could just go on the way things were before. Before the constant boozing, before the hourly hits of cocaine, before Elton crouched over a toilet every night with his fingers down his throat. Elton wished he could go back to when it was just him and Bernie. 

 

_ Bernie. _

 

Elton doesn’t think he could ever hurt John the way he’d been hurt, but he wished maybe someone else would deal John out some kind of cosmic justice. And more often than not Elton found himself wishing that person would be Bernie. 

 

John didn’t like Bernie, probably because he was the only one Elton had besides John, and John had it in his head that he was the only one Elton truly needed. John had been stealthily cutting the two off from seeing each other regularly, and most days Elton was too fucked up to do anything about it. But the truth was Elton desperately wanted to hear Bernie’s voice, to feel his reassuring grip on his shoulder, to ask him if he thought everything would really be okay.

 

Elton knows Bernie has seen the bruises and scratches, the red welts. Bernie had tried to bring it up in that worried way of his once, but Elton had dismissed it. Had dismissed Bernie. Elton wondered what Bernie would do if he ever got the verbal confirmation that Elton was being hurt. That Elton was in pain every day. 

 

He’d like to think Bernie would knock John around his head like John had done to Elton so many times before. 

 

“Where are you?” John draws Elton back into the present, tapping a long finger on this side of Elton’s temple.

 

_ ‘Anywhere but here,’  _ Elton thinks

 

Instead, Elton smiles again. “Right here with you,”

 

John smiles back, a shark’s smile. “Good.”


End file.
